Because They're Kunoichi
by ScarletCamellia
Summary: Because the word ninja is synonymous with the words sacrifice, loyalty, and persistence, but love especially. And to be kunoichi one has to be special.
1. Tenten Sacrifice

_So this is a kunoichi-centric, multi-chaptered fic. I'm leaving Temari out because I'm sticking to Konoha kunoichi right now. Maybe I'll change my mind and put Temari in too. The pairings are gonna be NejiTenten, KibaIno (my first try at it!), NaruHina, and SasuSaku. Possibly some ShikaTema. For now probably not, maybe I'll add it on._

_So this is chapter one - Tenten.._

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Tucking a stray of chocolate-hued hair back into her twin buns, she grabbed the next item and deliberately slid it over the scanner.

Beep.

Her calloused fingers, so used to the feel of kunai and shuriken and senbon, were just as quick flying over the number pad. She smiled at the customer, chatted with her a little bit, and then took the cash from between her fingers.

She sighed. She really did love her days as a normal civilian, working her part-time job. Every Sunday both she and several of her friends would take the day off, not even bothering to train but just giving their body a slight rest. These days let her breathe a little, experience a day without summoning scrolls to rain down hundreds projectiles of sharp, cold steel. She and Neji-kun could be a normal couple for a day, instead of him on watch for both of them, with her hovering by his blind spot. They could walk the streets shopping and laughing and giggling like all the other civilian couples that she saw on a daily basis.

On a daily basis, when she was the one covered in blood and stumbling in exhausted from her latest mission.

Pushing the thought from her mind, she chatted it up with Sumiko-san, the florist who worked part-time at Ino's shop, and gossiped with her about her latest crush, the doctor who helped Hana at her vet clinic. Wishing her a good day and good luck on her date, she saw her off after bagging the mangoes and began a fast-paced conversation with Akiyo.

She realized she never had to look far from even everyday life to be reminded of her life as a ninja, however. Akiyo, age 7, was adorably rambling on excitedly about his first day of Ninja Academy which was yesterday. His older brother, 11, who she knew was in Iruka-sensei's class, rolled his eyes and mentioned how Akiyo couldn't stop talking about it. Tenten couldn't help cracking a grin as she bagged up mayonnaise and told them to say hello to their mother, but quickly masked her thoughts as she began brooding.

Her lifestyle could never be that of a civilian, if for no other reason than just her title - kunoichi. Even a genin couldn't ever be normal again, because as long as the world exists so does crisis, and crisis demands every ninja possible to give up what they can for defense.

The word ninja, she realized, was synonymous with sacrifice.

Knowing what she did now, would she have followed the same path? She didn't know. Honestly, the only reason she entered the academy was because she wanted to be recognized. With a plain appearance (Neji would argue otherwise), no kekkei genkai, and no notable family name (Anko-sensei had been nice enough to take her in), she had wanted recognition, not unlike Naruto, she laughingly realized now.

The door jingled, and Moegi ran in, panting. At first Tenten assumed she was on another D-rank mission within the village (although Moegi herself was almost 14 now, even chunin were given low missions sometimes,) or perhaps she was having a race with Konohamaru. However, when Moegi half-regained her breath, she sputtered out, "Tsunade-sama..."

Tenten didn't need to hear more to understand. She moved her hands up to tie up her hair into twin buns only to realize even more that she could never completely get away from her life as a kunoichi. Her hair already rested in perfect buns. In fact, she had meticulously - subconsciously - been tucking it away continuously, just so she could be ready at a moment's notice.

Adrenaline pumped through her system, and instinct took over. She whipped off her apron in one smooth motion - a simple flick of the wrist, and a snap of the elbow, so similar to throwing a shuriken. She chuckled when she saw what had been underneath the uniform apron. Ninja's intuition - she had unwittingly slipped on her fighting outfit that morning.

She ran to the back room to hang her apron in her locker, and on the way passed Aiko. Aiko raised an eyebrow at her, and Tenten nodded, sparing a quick peek over her shoulder at her counter. She shoved the pre-prepared note - when did she write that? - at Aiko, asking her to please give that to Neji in case she wasn't back by the time he came to pick her up. Tenten knew she must have had that ready at all times.

She could never be a normal civilian, she realized. She was always on alert and always prepared without ever giving it a second thought.

Because she was kunoichi.

She opened her locker, crinkling up her apron and throwing it inside. She snatched her hitai-ite off the hanger, strapping it over her forehead, then threw her giant scroll on her back.

Basking in the sun, she gracefully leaped to a rooftop and quickly picked up a running pace across them, heading straight for the Hokage Tower.

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_So whatcha think? R'n'R please! ^_^_

_~ScarletCamellia_


	2. Ino Loyalty

_Hey there._

_Sorry this took me sooooooooooooooooo long...winter term is a bitch... *shudder*_

_The good news is that it's OVER. O-V-E-R!!!!! And Spring Break is amazing. So I'm getting right to work on the 3rd chapter tomorrow. Yay._

_This chapter is KibaIno and it's about loyalty. Hope you like it!_

**Disclaimer: Naruto (c) Masashi Kishimoto**

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Ino couldn't stop smiling to herself as she looked around her, sunshine streaming in through the glass panels. The flower shop was hers now, undeniably. And she could come run it herself on Sundays, her day off (unless there was a mission).

Thank you Daddy, she thought, this is such a wonderful birthday present...

She loved her clan, so much. They were her support. She knew not everyone had what she did, and she also had seen what it was like to have that ripped away...she shuddered as she thought of Sasuke.

And to think that she had loved him!

No, she had never loved him, she told herself as she watered some growing asphodels. It sometimes made her sad to think that she had spent so much time agonizing over Sasuke when there had been somebody so perfect right in front of her the whole time. She had thought she loved Sasuke, but liking somebody and truly loving somebody were two completely different things. She knew that now, and she also knew what love was like. And love was completely different from like.

Love was loyalty. Unwavering loyalty and undeniable passion.

Passion that she honestly didn't think ninjas were capable of, until Kiba showed her it was possible to be passionate about being shinobi.

The chimes Ino had fastened to the doorframe pealed and clanged against the class as Ikuya shyly slipped through the door, checking over his shoulder to make sure nobody saw him enter. She rearranged the gardenias and grinned as she handed them off to him. He was going to go leave them in Nagisa's desk, she knew it. She gave him a knowing smile as he disappeared silently out the door with the bouquet hidden in his backpack, but winced as she thought of how she did the same to Asuma.

Even after two years, the thought still brought a bitter taste to her mouth and she had to hold in her gags as she thought about the stench of her sensei's blood as she had desperately forced her own chakra into him. Someday she knew she would be able to think of him again, not in his death but in his life, but she had yet to be able to do so. This was one reason why she had such a hard time with passion in her field of work.

Especially kunoichi, she thought, have a hard time being passionate about being a ninja, because being a kunoichi often meant doing the dirty work, like seduction missions. Being kunoichi sometimes meant being passionate about being cold and heartless.

And as good of a kunoichi as she was, Ino sometimes had no idea how that worked. So instead, she was passionate about her loyalty to Konoha. She had been on so many seduction missions; so many times she pretended to fall in love. She had started to pretend to fall in love before she ever had. That was the price she paid as a Konoha kunoichi. That's the loyalty that she had to her beloved home, the village where her clan lived.

She had sacrificed herself: who she was, her way of life, her emotions, her everything. For the protection of her home. Foundation weren't the only one who gave up their personality, she thought ruefully. Even when she looked at the Academy Students she couldn't help but feel depressed, thinking of the cost of loyalty to Konoha.

But Kiba had taught her otherwise. Loyalty was so important to him - the bond between him and Akamaru was amazing. And his clan...

Inuzuka were notorious for being fearlessly loyal to each other. As much as the Yamanaka loved each other, she thought, they never were so dedicated, so fierce towards each other, about each other. No, the Yamanaka were sweet and strong, but they never showed the gritty determination to fight for each other, not the way the Inuzuka did.

And strange as it was, Ino liked the passion of the Inuzuka. Ino wanted that. Because while on the outside she was sweet and strong like the Yamanaka, everybody who knew Ino knew that she and Sakura were both rivals and best friends because both of them were gritty and fiercely loyal. But Sakura was loyal in a different way, Sakura was loyal through love. It was her own downfall, Ino thought. Sakura loved too much.

But thinking back to herself, Ino was not just loyal through love. She clipped the stem of a cornflower and placed it delicately in a vase. Ino looked strong but sweet, in a way Sakura never had. Ino...looked delicate, angelic, even though she was anything but. Her hands started a new bouquet, with two large, pale pink hibiscus set to be the focal point.

Ino was loyal, to her family, to her love.

And that's why she didn't hesitate at all about becoming Inuzuka, because she felt that Inuzuka loyalty inside her. She was young, she knew that. She knew that most marriages at this age didn't work out. But she had to believe, she had to know, that she and Kiba would last forever.

She smiled as she selected a couple of blooming heliotropes to add to the bouquet.

She was only 18, but they had been a couple for at least two years already, if not longer...and she had known him for so long, she had forgotten what it was like without him in her life. And she didn't have to worry - she smiled again as she placed stems of flowering rosemary between the heliotropes. As popular as he was with the girls, his loyalty was never-ending, and she basked in it. The security and love he gave her was overwhelmingly soothing, she reflected as she framed the flowers with large ferns.

Over the years he had become such a part of her life...which was why that day that the flower shop reopened - the day it became hers - and he kneeled before her in front of the whole crowd gathered there, she didn't even consider becoming his.

She just knew.

She finished the bouquet by placing bunches of stephanotis between the purple heliotropes and rosemary, setting it on her own work desk where she could see it, right next to Kiba's picture.

Loyalty, she now believed, was equivalent to being shinobi. No matter what, a ninja would always be loyal to someone, something...and without a doubt Kiba was loyal to her, and she was loyal to Kiba. And they were loyal to Konoha, and their clans. They were loyal to their friends. Even the bonds that she originally had were only intensified by being kunoichi. Because being kunoichi meant undying loyalty, at all costs.

She smiled thinking about that now. Shinobi were so used to loyalty, so accustomed to a life lived for the greater good, so that somebody else could live better. It was this loyalty, she realized as she wrapped up a bouquet of forget-me-nots, that would hold she and Kiba together.

Forever, she added.

She tugged off her apron to take a break and adjusted her purple skirt. Today she and Kiba had taken their pre-wedding photos and they had agreed to wear their ninja outfits, because they felt it accurately described them, so she ended up wearing her ninja gear even on her off day.

And in the back of her mind, she also knew that it never hurt to be prepared. She absentmindedly reached under her desk, where she kept her spare medic-nin pouch, along with some senbon, kunai, and shuriken.

She checked it very often. Ino never let herself forget that before all else, she had to be prepared as a kunoichi of Konoha.

Being kunoichi meant knowing where your loyalties lay.

And Ino knew exactly where hers did - Konoha, the Yamanaka, and Kiba. And soon, the Inuzuka would be on that list too. She smiled, but in her daze cut herself with the shears. Cursing her lack of attention, she focused her eyes on the cut as in a split second the blood spilled over. It was a little one, she thought, not worth using the Mystical Palm for. She centralized chakra in her other finger and held it over her hand as the flesh came back together.

This, she said to herself, was why she was loyal to Konoha. No matter how much she had given up, Konoha had given it back to her tenfold. She was able to both break people and heal them, defend herself and her home, and make her family proud.

Above all else, though, it had given her a fiancé who showed her how to be passionately loyal, even about things she didn't think she should be proud of. Like being kunoichi, she thought, but Kiba had shown her that her loyalty itself was something to be admired. That she was something to be admired. Ino checked her shinobi gear again, running her fingers over the tools without looking at them, mentally counting them over and over.

Being loyal meant being prepared, she repeated to herself.

Konohamaru came running in, chimes clanging not-so-angelically against the glass. Ino absentmindedly handed him a single apricot blossom still on the branch - he gave those to Hanabi a lot, she knew. But Konohamaru just shook his head, still panting, and threw a mission scroll at her.

In a single graceful - delicate - swoop of the arm she instinctively swept her shinobi gear out of her desk, holding them against her body as she quickly and smoothly caught the scroll. She stuffed everything in her medical pouch, counting the syringes. The Tanto went above it on her bare waist, and then all the kunai and shuriken and senbon were in place too.

Konoha needed her. And as a loyal kunoichi that meant doing her job.

She tossed the keys to the shop at Konohamaru with one snap of her fingers and he took over behind the desk, as she flew out the door and leapt to the rooftop in one seamless motion, angelic hair flowing seamlessly in a golden train behind her.

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_Loved it? Hated it? Let me know!_

_The word "train" at the end was a slight reference to the fact that Ino's getting married._

_Also, I tried to use the flower with the corresponding meaning for each situation in which flowers are mentioned:_

_Asphodel: Regret_

_Gardenias: "I love you in secret."_

_Cornflower: Delicacy_

_Hibiscus: Delicate beauty_

_Heliotrope: Devotion/Eternal Love_

_Rosemary: Constancy/Fidelity/Loyalty_

_Fern: Shelter_

_Stephanotis: Happiness in marriage._

_Forget-me-not: Faithful love/Memories_

_Apricot Blossom: Timid love_

_And thus, that part in the middle where Ino builds a bouquet is actually a reflection of her own relationship with Kiba, with each of the flowers symbolizing something different! I'm pretty proud of myself. Though I do have to credit my awesome friend VHS for inspiring me to do that by mentioning there was a flower that meant loyalty..._

_R'n'R please!_

_~ScarletCamellia_


	3. Hinata Persistence

Disclaimer: Really? It's not like I would be able to draw like Kishi-san, you think I could own a freaking ani/manga?

Sorry it took me so long to get this up. Finals...are a bitch, and they are coming up, and I will try to get Sakura's done quickly. If anybody's even reading these stories. T.T

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Hinata sighed as she picked up the eraser again and took out one of the lines, then started over again with the design. It was always hard, getting started on a new dress. It was much easier just to fall back on old designs, maybe with different material, or just pick up the look of another designer and tweak it a little.

But Hinata had never taken the easy way out. If she had wanted to do that she wouldn't have opened up a dress shop. Her family had enough money, so much that she would never have to work another day in her life if she wanted. Becoming a ninja was already enough.

Nothing had ever been easy for her. And she had come so close before to just giving up, when Naruto showed her that she had to persist, to keep pushing on, and sometimes you had to backtrack a little bit. But you always had to keep going.

She picked up the pencil again.

She re-drew the outline of her latest dress. It was one that Ino would like, she realized. The tulle was to lay over the top and stand up in points, blown over slightly to look like soft waves. It was fitted into the waist, and from there the holes in the mesh-like material widened to be more like a net hanging over the shimmering lavender silk, and the skirt flared out around the knees where it ended in a bubble edge, the bottom edge curling back underneath.

It was a rather simple dress, light and airy and pixie-like. Perhaps Ino would agree to have this as the bridesmaids' dress. Hinata's eyes flickered over to the corner of the shop, where Ino's bridal gown hid between boxes of her latest shipment of thread.

She got up from her desk and walked over to the mannequin which she had adjusted proportionally to Ino's torso and height. Grabbing a few senbon from her pouch, she pinned up several spots on the unfinished cream white dress. She pinned and re-pinned at least 20 times before she finally settled back, threading a needle with ease.

To the naked eye, it looked as if she was pinning the same spots on the dress. But Hinata's eyes were not naked. Byakugan helped her see much more than just the chakra circulatory system. Threading a needle was as simple as batting an eyelash.

As her fingers, guided with precise chakra, quickly hand-stitched some adjustments to the dress, Hinata smiled in contentment. Ino was going to look gorgeous at her wedding. She was a bombshell on a daily basis, but Hinata could not even imagine how beautiful Ino would look all prettied up. She was almost afraid the sun itself would hide, and that her wedding would be cloudy.

But it wouldn't matter because Ino would be beautiful enough to light up the whole ceremony.

Hinata had never focused on herself. She always watched out for Hanabi, worried about Neji, and worried about Sakura after Sasuke left. She had watched over Ino after Asuma died and taken in Tenten all those years ago when Temari had injured her so gravely. But most of all, she worried persistently about Naruto.

Naruto showed her that it was okay to think for herself every now and then. That he, at least, would always be thinking of her.

She tied up the end of the string and smoothed out Ino's dress. Her fingers flitted over the the bento boxes she had prepared and subconsciously tucked them into her bag. It was habit now - on Sundays, she and Naruto went to the training ground and had a picnic for lunch.

When your boyfriend was a training-obsessed freak, it was your version of date night.

Persistence was the key to life in the Hyuga clan. If you didn't - if you couldn't - keep training, you were useless. Hinata had been born without the fiery determination of her family. She would have crumbled as a weak heir had it not been for Naruto. For many years he hadn't even known that he was the one who saved her. But when she admitted it to him while standing up to the Deva Path, she felt the truth of her own words burning inside her.

He had given her the fire that she had always been meant to have.

Without him, she would have taken the easy way out, and would have just given up.

She was going to finish Ino's dress before the deadline, again. Her fingers worked so quickly, guided with chakra. They went almost as rapidly as her arms when she used the Gentle Fist. She managed to stitch the silk and ribbon embellishments on in a manner of seconds.

Finally satisfied, she stepped back. No shortcuts - persistence and patience was key. She had always had patience, but never the persistence or courage to back it up.

And after all these years, she had finally managed to catch up to Neji. When he got up after she defeated him in a recent spar, he pulled her into a hug and she thought she would die from happiness. Now she was set to become the clan leader in a couple of years.

Nobody had been happier than Naruto, she remembered, and she knew that he had been right all that time. She was strong enough, she just had to realize it. In fact, they frequently had arguments over who had been happier for whom - when Hinata, at the age of 18, had been named next clan head, or when Naruto, at age 19, had been named the Rokudaime. Tsunade only had a matter of months left before she was set to retire, and Naruto was enjoying his last couple of days before he took over as head of the village and followed in his father's footsteps.

She smoothed out Ino's dress one last time, and slipped it up and over the mannequin, hanging it in a one fluid motion and slipping it onto an already crowded rack. She sighed - she'd have to start a new one now.

But that was the most exciting part - having an empty mannequin and all the possibilities lying before her. She giggled as she thought of how tomboyish Tenten would lament having to get into a dress for Kiba and Ino's wedding. Being with Neji-nii-san hadn't made her any more girly at all. (She remembered her recent rant about wearing a dress for a seduction mission - dddt"Those awful, awful things! You can't even lift up a leg in those to do a proper kick! When you jump they freaking billow around you! And HEELS! Don't get me started on those-!" It had gone on for hours.)

Come to think of it, Temari probably would also not be happy with putting on such a formal dress. The differences between her and the bride-to-be were settled now, as Temari had finally realized that Shikamaru and Ino were teammates, friends, but nothing more.

As she reached for the lavender fabric, however, Hanabi burst in. Surprised, Hinata turned around. "Hanabi?" She stepped forward, confused. "Aren't you training with Kono-kun? Or is he running with Moegi?"

Hanabi panted a couple times before squeezing her pearly eyes shut, shaking her head, strands of hair flying. Hinata allowed a ghost of a smile to reach her face - when she did that, she looked just like a little girl again, the little sister that she had brought up instead of her mother.

The one she had raised with endless persistence.

"Mission. Scroll."

Hinata's eyebrows arched delicately, then she reached out and caught the scroll with ease. Scanning her eyes over it, she nodded firmly.

"Should I go tell Rokudaime-sama?" Hanabi asked.

"Hai. Tell Naruto-kun that we'll have to push off the training session and lunch until after I get back. If you watch over the shop, you can bring Kono-kun and you two can have the bento boxes."

"He's closing up Ino's shop right now, but he'll be over soon." Hanabi smiled at Hinata, and watched as her older sister moved gracefully out the door, almost dancing, more ballerina than kunoichi.

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Good? Bad? Please let me know!

Sakura's next!

R'n'R! :D


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